Bill Yates says he has quit his addiction for good and doesn't need
anyone telling him to turn his will over to God.

So he won't participate in any Alcoholics Anonymous-based treatment
programs at the New Hampshire State Prison, although that's the only type
offered. His refusal has prevented him from getting his sentence reduced,
and he now fears it will prevent him from getting out on time.

"Alcoholics Anonymous is religious, and the prison cannot hold
anybody back from freedom because they failed to attend an unequivocally
religious process," he said.

Yates wants the prison to add a program called Rational Recovery to
its list of acceptable drug and alcohol treatment programs. Rational Recovery
never mentions God and, unlike Alcoholics Anonymous, doesn't view addiction
recovery as a life-long process. You just simply quit, as Yates says he
did.

"The worst way to quit something you love is to do it one day at
a time," said Lois Trimpey, who co-founded Rational Recovery with
her husband Jack. "You have to take the high dive and get it over
with."

The prison doesn't buy it. It's not about to allow inmates, 85 percent
of whom have a substance abuse problem, to consider that treatment. And
anyway, the prison considers Alcoholics Anonymous spiritual, not religious.

"The people who created Rational Recovery, as far as I can see,
have problems with God," said Steve Kenney, director of substance
abuse services for the New Hampshire Department of Corrections. "They
can't separate out God from spirituality. They don't like the idea of being
powerless. If you're an alcoholic, the fact remains, you are powerless."

In the late 1980s, when the Department of Corrections began developing
its intensive, 11-month treatment program known as Summit House, it reviewed
techniques used around the country and found that the 12-step program in
Alcoholics Anonymous worked the best, Kenney said.

Those steps include participants' acknowledging the following:

"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had
become unmanageable.

"We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the
care of God as we understood him.

"We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of
character."

One of the benefits of the Alcoholics Anonymous platform, Kenney said,
is that it has many support groups outside the prison for inmates to join
and continue the process of recovery.

"In the criminal justice system, we need something where people
can be tracked,'' Kenney said. "The problem with Rational Recovery
is the individual could opt out and say "Okay, I'm well now."

Courts around the country, however, have ruled the 12-step program of
Alcoholics Anonymous is religious. In June of 1996, the New York Court
of Appeals ruled that the New York Department of Corrections substance
abuse program was unconstitutional because, "after a fair reading
of the doctrinal literature of Alcoholics Anonymous (the 12-step program
was found to be) unequivocally religious."

"It isn't my intention to badmouth AA as much as it is to show
there are alternatives to AA," Yates said. "But when you force
AA on me without accepting any alternatives ... to recovery, that's what's
wrong."

The prison has urged Yates, who suffered from a heroin addiction, to
go through the Summit House program, which the prison describes as voluntary.
In refusing Yate's application to get a sentence reduction, Warden Michael
Cunningham wrote, "Since his confinement, he has not participated
in any meaningful programming. Based on this, I believe a sentence modification
should not be granted until he has completed the Summit House program."

Yates fears he will hear the same thing in October when the parole board
considers releasing him after he finishes his minimum sentence.

There are currently 31 inmates who have served their minimum prison
sentence but aren't being released because they haven't completed any drug
treatment programs. No inmates has said he or she objected for religious
reasons.

Yates, 38, had grappled with a drug problem for years. He entered Seaborne
Hospital in Dover in 1985 where he went through a 12-step based program.
He stayed clean for 60 days following his release. He used drugs and then
got clean again but after his infant son died in 1987, he turned again
to drugs.

It wasn't that he was powerless to stop his addiction, but he chose
not to, he says.

"Using heroin was not fully attributable to my son's death,"
he said. "I made a choice to use heroin."

He first heard about Rational Recovery in prison four years ago from
his mother who had attended Alcoholics Anonymous for 10 years before recovering
through the Trimpeys' program. The techniques worked for him as well.

His recovery, he says, is legitimate: Drugs are prevalent behind bars
and he's resisted them using Rational Recovery.

Yates didn't have to go to a support group and admit he had a disease.
He just stopped.

"If you want to quit smoking, do you want to hang out with other
smokers?," Lois Trimpey said. "You're not going to say you're
a recovering smoker and gratuitously hug people you don't care for."

Rational Recovery is based on a technique known as Addictive Voice Recognition
Technique. The Trimpeys, who live in Lotus California and appeared on the
Maury Povich Show in 1996, tell addicts that people effectively have two
brains. The primitive one -- the midbrain -- generates survival appetites
for food and water and in some people, substances like alcohol and cocaine.
The other brain, or cerebral cortex, enables people to think and solve
problems.

"In Rational Recovery, we use the neocortex, our human brains,
our selves, to override the appetite for alcohol and other drugs,"
the couple writes in its literature. "This may be done without recovery
groups, moral, spiritual, or psychological improvements, higher powers
or labeling yourself an alcoholic.'"

The Trimpeys advise people to consider the primitive brain as "it,"
the beast. So it's "it" wants a drink or drugs, not "I"
want a drink.

"Instead of struggling one-day-at-a-time, you make a Big Plan to
quit for good," they write. "A Big Plan has only five words,
"I will never drink/use again." ... You may notice strong feelings
-- anxiety, sorrow, anger -- when you contemplate your Big Plan. Those
feelings are not truly yours, but are the expressions of a fearful Beast.
Your old enemy is on the run."

The Trimpeys have four Rational Recovery centers, in Dallas, Chicago,
Sacramento and Newport Beach, Calif. They have a toll-free phone number:
1-800-303-CURE. And their book, Rational Recovery: The New Cure, is in
its second printing.

To implement the program, the prison simply has to stock the book and
acknowledge it's a viable method of quitting addictions. Or it could go
further and hire a full-time instructor -- still far cheaper than the Alcoholics
Anonymous programs the prison now runs. But no prison in the country has
so far done that.

"The reason they don't is because (AA) is a means of controlling
them," Lois Trimpey said. "You can never quit AA because you'll
have a relapse. People are expected to go for life."

Kenney says he would offer inmates alternatives to Alcoholics Anonymous
if they objected for religious reasons, just not Rational Recovery.

Inmates who have stopped feeding their addiction are in remission, he
said, not recovered. Sure there are some drugs and alcohol in prison, but
not using them doesn't mean you're totally recovered, Kenney said. There
are difficult struggles outside prison and it's those struggles that fuel
addiction.

"I think (Yates) is latching on to Rational Recovery because it's
the easy way out," he said. "They have to do very little."

(Carrie Sturrock can be reached at 603-224-5301, ext. 309, or by e-mail
at csturrock@cmonitor.com.)

Your Monitor article of January 13 was just sent to me by a correspondent
of mine. It was, in my opinion a well presented and unbiased news item
. The sorry truth about religious intolerance always comes as a surprise
to me because I prefer to think that government employees are really trying
to do the right thing. In this case, I read your story to illustrate how
the state prison system is trying to force Mr. Yates into a clearly religious
program. Just look, for example, at the "Serenity Prayer" that
closes every meeting.

I am a retired Oregon lawyer. One of my professional disappointments
was that I never had a case where I could represent a non-religious inmate
who was being forced into AA. I have done considerable research on the
question of a state's power to require an inmate (or a even a drunk driving
defendant) to enter the very religious Alcoholics Anonymous program where
six of the twelve steps are religious in nature. The question of, "Does
a state improperly endorse religion if it requires non voluntary participation
in AA," has been answered with a resounding, "Yes," in many
jurisdictions.

I well understand that a imprisoned felon has surrendered many of his
rights but he has not lost his constitutional right of religious freedom.
I strongly suspect that the attempt to force Mr. Yates into this program
is simply a test of wills. The system is not willing to give an inch --
even when it is clearly wrong.

I am confident that there are lawyers in the great state of New Hampshire
who would love to sink their teeth into this case.

Rationally yours,
Jerry Billings
415 SW 13th Avenue
Portland OR 97204

P.S. Is my memory right and isn't the official state motto of New Hampshire,
"Live Free or Die"?

As a practicing attorney I was intrigued by numerous quotes of the New
Hampshire Department of Corrections officials regarding the case of Bill
Yates.

1. "The people who created Rational Recovery, as far as I can see,
have problems with God." Setting aside any argument that the First
Amendment specifically allows each citizen the absolute right to have "problems
with God", Mr. Kenney inherently imposes his conception of God. Many
religious faiths reject the premise that mankind is powerless over inanimate
objects( i.e.- alcohol). This includes various Fundamentalist Christian
denominations that view AA as a "counterfeit religion" ( see:
Way of Life Fundamental Baptist News Service and PsychoHeresy Awareness
Letter, Martin and Bobgan, September-October, 1997). I am of the opinion
that Mr. Yates' challenge under the First Amendment is validated by the
government imposing a doctrine that requires a conception of God, and that
his complaint is unassailable when, as here, that conception of God mandates
a specific system of belief;

2. "the Department of Corrections ... Reviewed techniques used
around the country and found that the 12-step program in Alcoholics Anonymous
worked the best," Kenney said. Here, Mr. Kenney acknowledges the existence
of alternative methodologies even though the State Prison refuses to offer
any alternative to the religious doctrines of the 12-step program. Further,
a recent Federal Government research study entitled Project MATCH determined
that there are few differences in the effectiveness of three treatment
approaches (12-step, cognitive-behavioral coping skills therapy, and motivational
enhancement therapy), and any differences are not statistically significant.

3. "In the criminal justice system, we need something where people
can be tracked," Kenney said. I am unaware of any legal foundation
for the proposition that once a person has paid his/her debt to society
the government has a continuing right to "Track" that person.
Without question the system has a right and an obligation to monitor probationers
and parolees. Once a full release from the system is obtained, however,
the monitoring rights of the government cease. More insidious, Mr. Kenney
acknowledges that the government delegates this alleged right to AA.

4. "Since his confinement, he has not participated in any meaningful
programming," Warden Michael Cunningham wrote. Inasmuch as the only
available programming is 12-step methodology, it must be assumed that the
only meaningful programming requires an adherence to the religious doctrine
presented. Once again, Mr. Yates' Constitutional challenge is validated
by the statements and acknowledgements of the prison officials.

I urge every reader to carefully consider the significance of government
officials using terminology that presupposes the right to "track"
and "program" citizens. It may not be simple coincidence that
AA approved literature quotes Aldous Huxley (Brave New World) as the man
who called Bill Wilson (co-founder of AA) " the greatest social architect
of the century."